Abstract
In lek mating systems, males aggregate and defend arenas where they display for females; females select and mate with a male and then solely raise their offspring. Generally, female visits and copulations increase and reproductive variance in male mating success declines with lek size. Here we investigate how male display effort changes across a gradient in lek size. We expect male display effort, an energetically expensive activity, will increase with lek size and male rank due to changes in breeding opportunities and competition among males. We test the interaction of male rank and lek size on display effort using the white-bearded manakin, Manacus manacus (Aves: Pipridae), a well-studied species with a wide geographic distribution in the new world tropics. We used mini-video recorders to simultaneously capture female visits and display behaviors of 41 males distributed over 10 leks. We found that overall display effort increased disproportionately with lek size due to males of both high and low ranks increasing their display effort at larger leks. Our results suggest that increased breeding opportunities and intrasexual competition at larger leks result in males of different ranks investing similarly in increased display effort in order to attract females.
Highlights
In lekking species, sexual selection is hypothesized to drive the evolution of motor patterns and morphological traits of males as they perform acrobatic displays and intensely compete with each other to mate with females [1]
Aggregate display effort as measured by rolled snap rates varied considerably among these leks, but as expected, we found that aggregate display effort by males increased with female visits as measured best by a non-linear model (r2 = 0.48, F1,8 = 8.40, p = 0.018) (Fig 4)
When we examined behaviors of lowest, intermediate, and highest ranking males, we found that display effort of males, regardless of rank, was significantly greater in large leks (F1,35 = 32.35, P
Summary
Sexual selection is hypothesized to drive the evolution of motor patterns and morphological traits of males as they perform acrobatic displays and intensely compete with each other to mate with females [1]. Mechanical and vocal sounds emitted by males essentially trigger a battle for courtship success (female visits) among competing males [2, 3]. As lek size gets larger (i.e., more males), mating opportunities likely increase as female visits are more frequent at larger leks [1, 3, 4]. Mating success in most lekking species is skewed in favor of a few males (hereafter called high ranking males), which after detailed inspection by females, PLOS ONE | DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0162943. Mating success in most lekking species is skewed in favor of a few males (hereafter called high ranking males), which after detailed inspection by females, PLOS ONE | DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0162943 September 28, 2016
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